


But let a Splinter swerve--

by amonitrate



Series: The Gifted and the Damned [3]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-11 05:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12928464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amonitrate/pseuds/amonitrate
Summary: Coop hadn’t had much to say since they’d left Dead Dog Farm, like the wind had got knocked out of him and he was saving his breath for when he really needed it.From Jean Renault to Windom Earle in one evening. Filling some gaps left inCheckmateandDouble Play, creating different gaps to take their place.





	But let a Splinter swerve--

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Triumphof for beta!
> 
> Jump to End Notes for content warnings, some warnings are vaguely spoilery for the story.
> 
> Please feel free to message me to ask about specific triggers before reading.

Coop hadn’t had much to say since they’d left Dead Dog Farm, like the wind had got knocked out of him and he was saving his breath for when he really needed it. Harry supposed that was only natural. He wasn’t sure he’d gotten his own breath back yet, not enough to hold any kind of real conversation. Still felt like the moment after you went down under a tackle, the sudden crunch and ringing in the ears.

The road outside the truck was empty darkness and looming trees this time of night and Harry was hungry and worn out and a little light headed with lingering adrenalin. It had been a hell of a thing, watching Cooper set down his weapon and give himself up to a man who wanted him dead, watching them disappear from view. Watching for any movement through broken windows, straining for any sound as the hours passed and the sun went down and there was no sign from inside the house.

Trying to salvage what she could of the sting to clear Coop’s name, Denise had insisted Harry get him off the premises before they even photographed the scene. So they’d hustled him into the truck before the whites of his eyes had quite disappeared and here they were. For the first ten miles or so Cooper had seemed his unruffled self, sitting in the passenger seat staring out the windshield while Harry drove them back to the station, but eventually movement in the corner of his eye and a shift in the weight of the quiet drew Harry’s attention away from the road.

A quick glance got him next to nothing, just Cooper’s profile washed out in the night, shadows carving out one eye socket and the edge of a cheekbone. The silence started to eat away at Harry, but he wasn’t so great with words in the best of times. At times like this it was a downright struggle, finding the right thing to say.

“I’m sure Denise got enough on the wire to prove you were framed,” Harry ventured.

Cooper shifted in his seat and turned towards the passenger side window like he hadn’t heard Harry, lost in thought maybe, his face obscured enough that Harry couldn’t get much of a read on him. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to hand over your badge and gun. Some essential structure in Cooper had altered that day and Harry had felt the resonance in his own bones. The wrongness of it.

There was a soft rhythmic sound from the passenger side, cloth rubbing on cloth, and Harry split his attention from the road again.

“Harry,” Cooper said into the hush, “I’m wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“Sure, Coop. What is it?”

Cooper didn’t respond right away. Harry couldn’t quite place what he’d heard and at first it didn’t seem like Cooper was moving at all but when Harry realized what was going on a hole opened up in his chest.

_Jesus._

Coop was pulling at his wrists. At the wire around his wrists.

“If you could just--” Cooper broke off, his eyes black in the dim light of the cab. “I was going to wait until we arrived back at the station but I think it might be best if these restraints were removed sooner rather than later and I seem to be having difficulty doing it myself.”

Everything had happened so quickly they’d forgotten he was still tied up when they herded him into the truck, anxious to get him clear of the scene before the state police asked too many questions. As Harry watched the tugs went jerky and short like Coop wasn’t quite aware what he was doing.

“Hey, hey.” Harry said. “Hold on a minute.” Cooper didn’t seem to hear him. “Coop.”

Harry pulled the truck over, set the parking brake, flipped on the hazards and the overhead light. When he reached over and caught the bound wrists in his hands, Cooper flinched hard at the touch.

“Hey. Let me get this off of you.”

“Okay,” Cooper said, his voice gone taut. “Thank you, Harry.”

Renault had used a length of electrical wire cut from some appliance and he’d tied it so tightly Cooper’s hands were starting to go swollen and bluish. The three-pronged plug was dangling between his wrists and the wire had dug into the flesh, leaving it bruised and tacky with blood.

“We should get the doc to look at these.”

Cooper blinked, slow, like he was just waking up. “Harry,” he said.

“Yeah, Coop.”

He looked down, seeming to focus. “My hands hurt.”

Harry swallowed. “Yeah, I bet they do.” The knot was too tight, he couldn’t get a purchase with his fingers. “I’m gonna have to use my knife on this, okay?”

“Okay,” Cooper echoed. His eyes drifted shut and then snapped open again, too wide. “There’s someone in the house.”

House? “Coop--”

Cooper frowned at him. “They tied my wrists.”

“Yeah, they did. Just gimme a second and I’ll get you free, alright?” Harry found his pocket knife and pulled it out, flicked open the blade.

“They tied my arms behind my back.”

Harry paused. “Coop, your wrists are tied but they’re in front of you.”

Cooper stared down at his hands. “There was a knife.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a knife right here. I’m going to use it to cut this wire, alright?” Harry showed him the pocket knife in his hands, waiting. He wasn’t certain where Cooper was at the moment, but he was pretty sure it was far away from Twin Peaks. His dad had done this sometimes and Harry and Frank had known to keep quiet, to go play in the woods and leave him be until he found his way back to himself.

“I can’t feel my hands,” Cooper said. The thread of his voice sounded close to unraveling.

“Just hold still, okay? I’m going to use this knife to cut the wire.”

Cooper’s eyes locked on the blade of the knife and he held very still while Harry sawed at the wire, careful to keep the edge away from his skin. It took a lot longer than Harry had hoped. Cooper had dropped into silence again so Harry kept up a stream of chatter while he worked, rattling off a story about the last time Andy had taken a call about a cat up a tree. Cooper’s muscles were rigid under Harry’s hands, his skin clammy. He watched Harry work the knife against the wire and he didn’t seem to be listening to anything Harry said but whenever Harry stopped rambling he tensed up worse, making it hard not to accidentally cut him with the knife, so Harry kept talking.

Finally, finally, the knife broke through the bonds. Harry folded the blade away and stuck it back in his pocket before he carefully unwound the length of wire from around Cooper’s wrists, wincing when it pulled in a few places that had started to scab over. A trickle of fresh blood leaked down Cooper’s forearm to soak into his sleeve.

“Got a first aid kit in the glove box,” Harry said. “I’m just gonna reach past you to get it, alright?”

Cooper rubbed his right wrist and gave Harry a nod like maybe he’d understood. The first aid kit wasn’t much -- the larger kit was in the truck’s cab. But Harry pulled out some antiseptic cream and a wad of gauze and it would have to be enough until they could get to Doc Hayward.

“Renault told me something,” Cooper said as Harry bandaged his wrists.

“Yeah? What’d he say?”

Cooper was staring out the windshield again, but his expression seemed anchored back in the here and now. “He told me I brought the nightmare with me to Twin Peaks.”

“Well that’s a load of horseshit if I ever heard one,” Harry said, keeping his voice gentle. “Especially coming from a Renault.”

Cooper nodded, the lines of his face exhausted and grim. The bruise on his cheek had darkened in the hour since they busted him out of Dead Dog Farm and a hank of hair hung into eyes. He looked about as far from himself as Harry had ever seen him. Harry cradled one of Cooper’s hands in his own, adjusting the gauze on his wrist before he taped it down. Hawk hadn’t said anything but Harry knew he’d noted the lack of a weapon in Jean Renault’s hands. Knew he should have cared more about it.

Didn’t.

“I’m thinking I could use a cup of coffee right about now,” Harry said. “With a healthy shot of Jack.”

Cooper mustered a smile at that and Harry let his hand go and started the truck.

 

* * *

 

He’s not sure when it happened but he’s on the floor, blinking, his surroundings juddering in and out of focus.

_he’s on the floor his cheek smashed into the wood like he went down hard he can’t see anything_

He’s on the floor, his cheek smashed into the rough wood like he went down hard. Voices above him, tense and short. The light is wrong, it had been daylight when he--

_voices above him and the light is all wrong, flickering in the dark_

It had been daylight when he gave himself up to Renault and now twilight is casting long shadows over the floor. Flashes of light flare in the corner of his eyes. He blinks hard, trying to focus.

_he blinks, trying to focus. tries to get his hands under his chest to lever himself up, but_

He blinks and a faded daisy materializes on the wall, graffiti wavering like a mirage. Blue and red and white light strobes over the walls and floor. He tries to get his hands under his chest to lever himself up but the movement earns a laugh from somewhere above him and then a kick, sharp in the soft flesh between his ribs and pelvis, rolls him over onto his back.

_he tries to lever himself up but nothing cooperates, his hands are_

Before he can react, still coughing from the kick, the mountie straddles his chest and grabs his wrists as his hands come up in reflex.

_his hands are behind_

Renault has a length of black cord stretched between his hands.

_his hands are behind his back_

Renault crouches down by his head and studies him.

_his hands are tied behind his back_

Renault’s face in the shadows is impassive. “You are not quite with us, Agent Cooper.”

The mountie laughs. “If you wanted him compos mentis maybe you shouldn’t have knocked his lights out.”

Renault smiles.

He doesn’t remember getting hit. Renault had a gun on Denise. Renault had shouted his name. He’d made the exchange. Renault and the mountie shoved him through the door of Dead Dog Farm and then

_tied behind his back he doesn’t remember_

a sharp jump like a skipping filmstrip. His face pressed against the wood of the floor.

He must have blacked out. It would explain why his vision won’t settle and the way everything swims like he’s on a raft in the middle of a river heading for the falls. The mountie shifts his weight, pressing on half healed ribs and the need to be sick hits him, sharp and urgent, and that’s familiar too. Renault must see it in his face because he leans forward.

_his body surges without thought and he’s choking_

“Ah-ah. I know you have more willpower than this.”

He swallows bile, unwilling to find out what might be behind the blade of Renault’s tone.

Renault looms over him, wraps the black wire around his wrists and ties it with a sharp yank, then sits back on his heels and nods at the mountie, who rises, dragging him upright by the arms.

Everything goes grey and hollow and there’s a ringing in his ears. He can’t lock his knees and his legs won’t hold his weight and he can’t feel his hands at all. The mountie curses and he drops, pressing his eyes closed against the seasick blur as he hits the floor, pressing his cheek to the floor again, concentrating on the solid stillness of the wood.

When he can open his eyes Renault is still there, studying him like he’s a puzzle box. Press the right spot and he’ll pop open, expose whatever’s inside. Blood and viscera and everything he can’t normally see packed safe under his skin.

“Where do you go when you are not with us?”

He doesn’t understand the question.

“Sometimes, you are in another place. Where do you go?”

Is he talking about the giant? _The question is where have you gone._

“Jean, what the fuck does it matter? If you hit him too hard and he dies on us, what do you think the--”

“He is not dying. He is only confused.” Renault never looks away from him, like the mountie is a distraction. “Maybe I ask the wrong question. Do you know when you are, when you are not here?”

He tries to curl onto his side, to push himself upright, but nothing is working in sequence.

_his hands are tied behind his back, scratchy rope digging into his wrists_

His hands are tied in front of him, the wire digging into his wrists when he tries to move. The voices above him slur together and he loses track

_voices above him muffled and familiar, laughing_

loses track of where he is for a moment so he bites down, hard, on the inside of his cheek and things firm up a little. The mountie responds to something Renault says and grips the wire between his wrists, using it to lever him upright, but doesn’t try to force him to his feet this time. The world shifts around him and then settles again more quickly this time. The mountie shoves him until something solid hits his back, until he can stay sitting upright on his own.

“You see? His mind wanders, but he is not dead. Not until I decide.”

Renault smiles again.

 

* * *

 

It was delicious.

It was so much more than he could have dreamt up himself.

It was _cosmic._

Gossip in the diner that afternoon had tipped him off to a hostage situation between the local law and the local thugs and now here was Young Dale himself looking worse for wear, climbing down from the sheriff’s truck like maybe he wasn’t so sure where his feet should go. That was the thing about small town diner gossip: it was so well informed. Better intel than any network of spies.

Of course no one noticed his stolen utility truck staked out at the edge of the sheriff’s station parking lot, because no one noticed that kind of thing unless they were looking for it, even cops. Especially cops. Especially cops with other things on their minds, like drug busts gone wrong.

One of the cops was being held by the thugs, a trucker the next stool over at the diner had told him with the salacious air of a bored grandmother. The gleam in the trucker’s eye was less admiration than a kind of action movie lust as he revealed that the cop had supposedly given himself up to free another from the evildoers grasp. Such a heedless gesture of heroism just screamed Dale Cooper, that much had been immediately obvious. So he’d said his grateful goodbyes and paid his bill and moved his timeline up a notch to take advantage of the flow of the universe.

It was only after he put the final touches on his latest little art project that it occurred to him that Dale’s reckless streak, while delightful to behold when triggered with intention, might throw a wrench into his larger ambitions before they could get off the ground. Should the petty thug in question give in to the inevitable temptation that arose from spending any significant amount of time with Dale, all would be lost. But never fear, here was the boy now, moving stiffly in the cowboy sheriff’s wake towards the doors to the station, the oval of his face milk pale in the dark. So he’d survived the siege, but someone had clearly succumbed to the altogether natural impulse to smash his pretty face in, and by the hitch in his gait hadn’t stopped there. Wonderful.

The cowboy said something and Dale shook his head and Windom wanted to creep closer but binoculars would have to do, for now. He watched them pause and listen to a gesticulating blonde, watched Dale slip inside the building, watched the sheriff respond to a call and disappear behind him. Wished he could have been there, to see Dale’s face.

Thankfully he had an active imagination and plenty of prior experience to fill in the blanks: Dale, noble in his ridiculous lumberjack shirt and puffy vest, more stricken by the death of an innocent than concerned with what the diorama in the sheriff’s office might mean for his own pointy head. Had he filled his new pals in on his sordid past, his secret shame, his breach of honor? The black mark on his soul?

Lucky for Windom it was only the one mark and a minor one at that, whatever Dale thought of it. He needed that soul intact. The plan required weakening the scaffolding a bit -- planting charges, as it were, for the final imploding blast -- but timing was everything, and the time was not yet ripe.

They had a ways to go and Windom intended to enjoy every last moment of the journey.

 

* * *

 

“Doc Hayward’s on his way,” someone says.

It takes him a long while to reshape the sounds into words and the words into sense. Then he has to remember who Doc Hayward is, why he’d be on his way, what significance any of it has to this particular moment in time.

“Okay,” he answers, halfway through the process. Stuck trying to translate _Hayward_ into more than an abstract two-syllable sound.

He knows he’s not acting normal, not himself, he’s just not sure how obvious that fact is from an external perspective. He’s having a hard time following what the others are saying, like his brain is on a slight delay, their words catching up to him in jumbled clumps of sounds that he then has to rewind and decipher before he can figure out if a response is required. He says words but he doesn’t know if what he says matches the situation. Everything feels an inch out of place.

There’s a body, a dead body, just in the corner of his vision, wearing a rictus of terror.

There’s a different face in front of him and at first it’s all abstract planes, curiously flattened in the dark. Beams of light play around the room and one lands briefly in his eyes and he shies away from it, squinting.

“Maybe when he gets here he should take a look at Agent Cooper,” someone else says.

The face in front of him frowns.

Agent Cooper? But he’s not an agent, not right now; they took his badge from him, he’d been suspended. He must say so aloud because there’s a pause in the room, an awkward silence. He’s not sure why. What he said is the truth, isn’t it?

“Harry,” the other voice says, closer now. “Lucy left a thermos of coffee in the conference room before she went home, why don’t you guys go grab a warm up. I’ll make sure no one touches the scene before the doc gets here.”

The face in front of him resolves back into its familiar three-dimensional organic Harry S. Truman form and nods. “That’s a good idea. Let’s take a break, alright?” Harry says to him. “Not much we can do here right now.”

A hand on his shoulder steers him towards a doorway, so he goes with the motion, follows Harry down the dark hall. Harry hands him a flashlight so he holds it but the beam doesn’t go where he wants it to go. Keeps getting in his eyes.

Harry’s talking to him but his brain has given up the laborious process of translating the sounds into English, so he just nods and sits in the chair Harry pulls out for him at the conference room table, and when Harry takes the flashlight from his hands and sets it next to him on the table so the beam makes a neat circle on the ceiling he cranes his neck to keep the circle of light in view. The reassuring glow is like a nightlight he once had, back when he was...

He blinks in the dark, trying to remember what he’d been remembering.

“Hey,” Harry says, and wraps his hands around a hot mug for him, like he’s a child, like he might drop it if left to his own devices. “Coffee with whiskey, just what the doctor ordered.”

He’s not sure what kind of doctor Harry sees, but doubts whiskey is a regularly prescribed remedy. Harry laughs, so he must have said that out loud too. Harry pulls up a chair next to him and sips his own mug of coffee and they sit together in silence. Or it should be silent. It’s not. He’s just not sure what he’s hearing, faintly, in the periphery. In the perimeter, not the periphery. Something about the perimeter. Did they check the perimeter? He lets the thought go, or tries, but it lingers.

Whiskey in coffee isn’t a combination of flavors he prefers, but he drinks it anyway. He’s cold and he’s not sure how long he’s been that way, hadn’t felt it until the contrast of the hot ceramic mug against his skin and he shivers, some of the coffee sloshing over the rim to run down the back of his hand. Harry takes the mug from him and sets it on the table. Wipes the coffee from his hand gently with a napkin.

“Has the sheriff’s department run into difficulty paying its electricity bill?” He knows he speaks out loud this time because he can feel the vibration of the words leaving his throat.

Harry shifts next to him, warm shoulder brushing his, and doesn’t answer the question. “Looks like Jean Renault got a little rough before we took him down. Were you knocked out?”

The shivering winds down enough that he thinks he can hold the mug without making a mess of things, so he takes it in his hands again, takes a swallow of warmth.

“There’s some missing time,” he answers. The words spill out with more urgency than he feels and he’s not sure why. His voice is brittle, not his own. “I think there’s some missing time.” He shakes his head. Doesn’t know what he means. Plays back Harry’s question and reviews the facts as he remembers them from Dead Dog Farm. “I came to on the floor, so statistically speaking there’s a good chance that someone hit me.”

“That sounds like a yes,” Harry says. His tone is light but his eyes are searching and serious in the shadows. “Coop, the lights are out because there was an explosion at the power station.”

This is something he should already know. When they’d arrived Lucy had told them about a fire but he hadn’t followed what she’d been saying closely enough to make sense of it.

“Windom Earle,” he says.

Flickering shadows cast by the flame from his lighter fall on a tableau of death.

The lurch in his chest when he tries to call Harry’s name and at first the sound wouldn’t form in his throat.

“Yeah, we think so.” Harry’s face is a blur of relief in the dim illumination of their flashlights.

Strobing fragments of the scene overlay his vision now like a series of camera flashes: the curve of antlers, blood on a chessboard, a smashed pair of glasses. He blinks but the fragments refuse to fit together into a whole before they fade into a confused afterimage.

“He…” He can’t get the words out. It returns in a flood: Lucy’s anxious piping as she huddles outside the sheriff's station. The overwhelming compulsion to go inside. Wanting to refuse the impulse and dreading what he’d find but unable to stop himself from venturing into the dark, heading straight for Harry’s office as if he knew, as if he knew what he’d find.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t known. Had he?

The dead man’s spirit is gone but his body’s fright still fills Harry’s office, the echoing presence of his last moment forceful enough to penetrate the buffering wall between the two rooms.

A quick thrust, a severing, a choke. He can’t shut it out.

“Coop--”

“He killed someone.” The coffee sours in his stomach. The room splinters into flattened shapes again as the world abruptly loses a dimension. There’s a sound, a floorboard creaking in the dark. There’d been no sign when he’d searched the perimeter, but someone is in the house with them, he’s sure of it. When he tries the light switch nothing happens, the power’s been cut. He can’t feel the mug in his hands. “Harry--”

The mug is gone again, leaving behind the memory of warmth.

“Cooper, listen to me.” Harry’s grip is an anchoring pressure on his shoulders. “I think you got hit pretty hard, okay? Things might be a little mixed up for awhile.”

“I’m okay.” His head hurts with a sudden ferocity. Or maybe it’s been hurting all along.

Harry gives his shoulders a quick squeeze. “Wouldn’t blame you if you weren’t.” One hand lingers, slides up to cup the space between his hairline and collar.

He closes his eyes. Nauseous from the coffee and the burn of the whiskey and the thick tang of blood. He can taste it at the back of his throat and swallows, struggling not to choke.

A voice at the door. Hawk. The other voice is Hawk, of course. “Harry, Doc Hayward’s pulling up outside.”

The hand slides away to pat his arm as Harry stands. “Hawk, why don’t you take a minute and get yourself some coffee. I’ll go meet the doc and bring him up to speed.”

He knows this means they don’t want to leave him alone. He closes his eyes again as an ache flares in his chest to match the one in his head and he can’t tell if the sensation is shame or gratitude. This isn’t the first time someone has sat with him like this and it doesn’t get any easier to bear, the knowledge that it might just be necessary.

Hawk takes Harry’s place, mug cradled in his hands, watchful and kind in the dark.

 

* * *

 

With the lights out the crime scene was already eerie as all hell but once Harry noticed the likeness between Cooper and the vagrant Earle had murdered something twisted in his gut and stayed that way. It was in the chin and jaw, in the the shape of the fingers pointing at the chessboard. No one else had mentioned it and Cooper himself seemed oblivious, but it stuck with Harry, that resemblance. The wide empty eyes behind shattered glasses, the smudged arch of the cheekbone, the lips around the chess piece stuffed between the teeth.

As soon as Doc Hayward had finished with the body and they’d gathered what little there was to find in the way of evidence, Cooper had drifted over to Harry’s desk and started unwinding the thin wire that pinned the corpse’s right hand to the antlers of Harry’s prized buck. The doc glanced over at Coop but didn’t stop him. Just told Harry a crew would come by from the hospital when the ambulance was free to take the body to the morgue, but it might be awhile. And that when he got a chance he should bring Cooper to the ER so someone could take a closer look at the goose egg on the back of his head. Coop couldn’t remember, but they figured he’d been pistol whipped, courtesy of Jean Renault.

Cooper ignored them, working with gentle diligence to free the dead man from his bonds.

“Is the concussion anything we should worry about?” Harry asked, keeping his voice low as he led the doc through the dark hall to the lobby door. “He’s been kinda rattled since Dead Dog Farm.”

Doc Hayward sighed, looking as wasted as Harry felt. “I checked him out best I could and he seems alright, physically. Just keep an eye on him, Harry.” He paused with his hand on the outer door, like he had something to say he wasn’t too sure about. “Your father used to come see me, before he passed.” At Harry’s nod, he continued. “So I know you know what else to watch for here.”

Harry’s father had leaned on his old pal Jack when things got too bad, when he couldn’t help but be in two places and times at once. He didn’t know what remedy Cooper turned to. Hell, he wasn’t even sure Cooper was aware there was a problem.

Without the power that ran the lights and the HVAC and everything else, the station felt muffled, like cotton in the ears. He’d sent Lucy home after they found the body, Andy close on her heels, and Hawk had gone looking for any sign of the stolen car that could have transported Earle’s victim. Now that the doc was gone too, it was just him and Cooper in the station. Him and Cooper and the poor guy left as some kind of sick gift, like when the cat dumped a chipmunk in your bed, limp and still warm.

Harry picked his way through the hall with more care than usual, like making a sound would break some kind of spell. By the time he got back to his office Coop had moved to the other side of the desk, started on the rope securing the body to the arm of the chair, but without a knife he hadn’t gotten very far. Harry waited until his struggle to free the dead man petered out before he spoke and when he did it shattered the hush despite how soft he’d tried to keep his voice.

“How’d he find you here?” Harry asked. “How’d Earle know you were in Twin Peaks?”

Cooper shook his head as he stripped off his gloves. “I don’t know.”

A carrion stench had started to seep into the room, mud and blood and waste and the faint sweet beginning of rot. Cooper crossed to the open window and Harry followed. They stood shoulder to shoulder for a long time before Cooper turned towards Harry, putting his back to the corpse. A thick fog of bleakness had settled over him.

When Harry reached out, the tips of his fingers brushing just below the bruise along his cheekbone, Coop’s eyes closed and he leaned into the touch. Harry could feel something welling up in Cooper, something he didn’t know how to soothe. He traced the line of his jaw then smoothed down the back of his neck, feeling the tension corded there. Coop didn’t move away so Harry let his touch linger, thumb stroking the soft spot under his jaw, feeling him swallow. Cooper bowed his head and when he spoke, the words vibrated against Harry’s hand.

“I don’t know what to do.” He sounded very young. “I tried to play his game and he… I don’t know why he’s doing this.”

“He’s trying to hurt you.” Cooper hadn’t told them much and Harry hadn’t asked yet, but he was sure of two things: Windom Earle, whoever the hell he was, knew Cooper inside and out, and Cooper was terrified of him.

 _I’ve got this thing for knives,_ Leland -- BOB -- had said _, just like what happened to you in Pittsburgh that time, huh Cooper?_

And Cooper had known without looking exactly how the corpse Earle left for him had been killed. _I believe you’ll find a stab wound one inch beneath the sternum, penetrating upwards, severing the aorta._

He didn’t open his eyes. “I’m not the one who got hurt, Harry. That man--”

Harry leaned in, his forehead nearly touching Cooper’s. “He knew what this would do to you.” It was a guess, but he’d bet his badge it was a bullseye.

 _You’ve seen this before,_ Harry had said, and Cooper had just nodded.

Harry might not have all the pieces yet but a picture was taking shape. Pittsburgh, and knives, and the wound on the dead man tonight; whatever had happened before, whatever had so worried Gordon Cole that he’d shown up personally to check on Cooper, Earle had to be part of it.

_You went into the chute in Pittsburgh, Coop. I want to make doubly sure that doesn’t happen again._

Cooper started to form some sort of protest and Harry shifted until their lips brushed. Cooper’s breathing hitched like it had snagged somewhere deep inside, but he didn’t move away.

“Harry,” he said, and Harry kissed him. Cooper opened to the kiss, a tremor running through him, and Harry brought his other hand up to gentle over the unmarked side of Coop’s face, from temple to cheekbone to the curve of his jaw.

“Harry.” There was such quiet despair in the word. Cooper took a half step back, not out of Harry’s reach but breaking the kiss, his eyes dark and guarded in the shadows.

Harry slipped his hand just inside Cooper’s collar, fingers pressing into the wire-tight muscle where his neck joined his shoulder like the touch might ease that tension.

“Please,” Cooper said. Harry didn’t know what he was asking and from the look on Coop’s face he didn’t know either. And that more than anything stopped him from closing the space between them again. Cooper might let him, might even want him to, but the office was warm enough still and Cooper’s skin under his hands was chilly and he’d gone rigid like he was clinging to the edge of a cliff. Like any wrong move from either of them and he’d drop.

Cooper was the most articulate person Harry’d ever met, but for this, whatever it was, he didn’t seem to have any words. After he’d found the body Harry had watched him go away while standing right in front of them, just like he had in the truck on the way from Dead Dog Farm, his eyes glazed over and unseeing in the dark, something inside him snuffed out. Hawk had said it was shock and Harry figured if anyone had reason to shut down that night it was Cooper. It wasn’t long before he’d blinked and shaken it off but for awhile afterwards he’d been like a scratched record, going along steadily enough until the needle hit a sudden skip. Losing his place and fumbling to find it again. Then the caffeine hit his system and the solid task of processing the crime scene seemed to lock him back into himself.

Cooper took another step away and Harry let him go.

“In the truck, on the way over from Dead Dog Farm,” Harry started. It was like picking his way through loose gravel, trying to find a solid path to suss out what he needed to know. “You said there was someone in the house. You said it again before Doc Hayward got here.”

Cooper stared at him. Blinked once, again, his expression gone blank. “I’m not sure I follow, Harry.”

Harry hesitated. How far he should push? He’d never gotten his father to talk about the things he said when he’d disappeared inside himself, no matter how carefully he asked. “You said there’s someone in the house and the power’s been cut. Was that… were you remembering something? Something to do with Earle?”

Back in the truck, Cooper had also mentioned a knife. At the time he’d thought Coop had been talking about the pocket knife Harry had used to cut the wire around his wrists. Now…

 _I was wounded in Pittsburgh, but other than that the case bears no similarities,_ he’d reassured Cole. But that was before Earle had shown up in town.

“I don’t--” Cooper shook his head. “Harry--” He didn’t move but a space seemed to open up around him like a word could send him into free fall.

“Nevermind,” Harry said. “Later. We’ll talk later.” In the daylight, when the power came back on, and without the grisly audience.

He’d let Cooper handle things, let him have the privacy he’d so obviously wanted while he traded chess moves with Windom Earle in the Twin Peaks Gazette. Kept an eye on him and hadn’t interfered. But this… this was a horror to rival Leland Palmer, and it had landed smack in his lap this time, desecrating what might as well be his second home. This was so far beyond mind games Harry was left winded from the cruelty. Sacrificing a random victim to toy with Cooper, for some private amusement...

_Everything has its own rationale, precision, intelligence. Windom Earle is a genius. And he's taken his first pawn in a very sick game._

Did Earle have any goal beyond torment? Would Coop be able to tell them what it was if he did? If Harry was going to be any help at all, if they were going to stop Earle before he hurt anyone else, he was going to need the full story.

The only problem was Harry was starting to think maybe there were chapters of that book Cooper himself hadn’t read.

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Brain, within its Groove  
> Runs evenly--and true--  
> But let a Splinter swerve--  
> 'Twere easier for You--  
> To put a Current back--  
> When Floods have slit the Hills--  
> And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves--  
> And trodden out the Mills--
> 
> Emily Dickinson, #556
> 
> Content warnings: Restraints. Semi-graphic description of a murdered body as seen in canon. Physical violence no worse than canon. Dissociation, derealization, depersonalization. Flashbacks. Brief non-graphic self harm. Traumatic amnesia.
> 
> Select dialog in italics taken from aired episodes.


End file.
